My Childhood in the 90's

What it was like for me being a little girl growing up in the 90's.

Being born at the end of 1988, I got to experience the full 90's childhood. And since I was a little girl, that was even better. Too bad I didn't like dolls and Barbies!

Some of my favorite moments of the early 90's were playing with toys. At my daycare, if you had Littlest Pet Shop, you were automatically considered "cool". Especially if you had the Littlest Pet Shop store! I also had all the other playsets and animals, the videos (which weren't very good), and the board game. I also really liked the Kitty Kitty Kittens. You know, those toy cats you'd shake to hear a "purr" sound. However, I typically performed surgery on them by cutting open their stomachs, sticking weird things inside (like Legos or Silly Putty) and have my mom sew them back up without her knowing what I was doing. Lite Brite was also a personal favorite of mine. I mean, who didn't enjoy nearly getting their fingers off if it over-heated? Okay, so I didn't enjoy that part so much! I also enjoyed the Pound Puppies playsets, too. Did anyone else ever have the big pink van that had the whole town inside of it? And how about those little restaurants that you could carry around with you anywhere? Ah, good times.

And what little girl wasn't obsessed with Lisa Frank? I, like everyone else, absolutely loved it! I had a Lisa Frank themed party for my fourth birthday at daycare, and I still remember the other girls screaming with delight when they saw all the Lisa Frank decorations and goodies in the party area. And everyone sure loved those goodie bags!

Not only did the 90's have great toys, they also had great games! May it be a video game or a computer game, I loved it either way. Some of my personal favorites were The Lion King Print Shop, Rugrats Adventure Game, Spyro the Dragon, and last but not least, Crash Bandicoot. Oh, how I loved playing Crash on my Playstation! The games were completely awesome, especially the second one. That's a game that I'll never forget. Oh, and we can't forget about Pokemon! Of course, I hate it now, but playing Pokemon Red on my Gameboy Color was a lot of fun. I learned so much about Pokemon it wasn't even funny. A lot of kids I knew considered me to be The Master!

The 90's also had some awesome movies! My absolute favorite was The Lion King. I still remember sitting in theaters as a five year old and asking my mom why Scar hated Mufassa so much. And who could forget Simba's song number, "I Just Can't Wait to Be King"? That was my favorite song as a little kid! Other 90's movies I loved were That Darn Cat!, Hercules, The Rugrats Movie, and my current personal favorite, Space Jam. Believe it or not, I'm still completely obsessed with Space Jam over ten years later!

Also with the 90's was the revolution of cartoons, producing us some of the best ones to ever air on television. I loved nearly every nicktoon on Nickelodeon (Rugrats, Rocko's Modern Life, Doug, and Hey Arnold being personal favorites) and I also liked Cartoon Network a lot back when it was good. I loved seeing what antics Cow and Chicken would get into and how DeeDee would sneak into Dexter's laboratory. I also enjoyed PBS Kids. I could not get enough of Arthur! Although I still watch it, the show has deeply gone downhill once the new millenium came. However, the most recent season was good so there's still hope. But it'll never be as good as it was in 1996. I also liked watching Nick Jr. before the Blue's Clues era began. I mean, who didn't like Gullah Gullah Island, Allegra's Window, and Eureeka's Castle? Those shows were some of the best pre-school shows ever! And who else remembers when Cartoon Network showed pre-school targeted shows? Sure it was on at, like, five in the morning, but hey, I had cable in my room. If you can recall Small World and Big Bag, you're awesome!

Also in the 90's were some of the best game shows ever. Double Dare, You Can't Do That on Television, Global Guts, Figure It Out, the early Slime Time Live, and of course Legends of the Hidden Temple were all awesome. I wanted to go on Legends so much as a little kid. But when they started giving away parts of the set on Figure It Out as prizes, I knew my dreams had been crushed. But it was still fun to pretend.

Of course, not all of the 90's is based on media. There were also super-fun places to go to as well. Two words: Discovery Zone. Every kid loved Discovery Zone! Who else remembers climbing up the slide and then slipping down into the ball pit? How about climbing on the nets when it clearly stated "no climbing" on the signs? And how about playing laser tag with your favorite Men in Black characters? And before Discovery Zone came, I had Leaps and Bounds. I still remember the T-shirts from there were the 'it' style in pre-school. We had the choices pink, purple, and aqua to choose from with awesome logos on the front. But this place closed quickly once Discovery Zone opened. And years later, Discovery Zone unfortunately closed, too, never to be forgotten.

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holy crap does anyone remember a show called bobby's world with the little id who always was riding on the darn tricycle thing and at the end of the theme song he would land in his dads humongus chair!!

i miss the 90's soo much although i mostly remember shows and music. like sheryl crow if it makes you happy. and shows like the ones i listed up there but i dont remember anything like fashions. i grew up mostly around 97 98 and 99, those are the years i remember most because i was born in 92 so i didnt get the chance to start out in the 90's. but i did love em and if i could be born in the 70' 80's or 90's it would definately be the 90's cuz they were cool!!!

yeah you liked pokemon... terrible show. Just an opinion but if you were born in mid 80's than theres no doubt you experienced the full 90's. I remember very vividly of the 90's and late 80's till i was 5/6.

We had a DZ in Arizona, but it closed in 1997 and only went there once. I did go to the one in VA a lot in 1993-1995 and those were great times.

I'm 19 now and I still love Pokemon, already got Diamond reserved and currently playing Pearl in Japanese. The game has advanced a whole lot since the R/B/Y days, but the latest ones brings back the greatness of Gold and Silver.

The '90s was the days of great Disney Movies, I will miss those years for that now that Disney has turned over to CGI and release movies every 2 years now >.>

Hmm, since I was born in 1983, I guess I'm a little too old to appreciate some of the stuff mentioned here. However, The Lion King was the first movie I saw in the theatre. I was 11 years old (long story...).

I never experienced Discovery Zone because I'm pretty sure I was too old to play there when they finally put one near me.

Nice article. I always enjoy reading what other people thought of video gaming in the '90s. To me, I still find the 16-bit era to be the Golden age for the games industry. Being born in 1983, my first introduction to games was with NES, but it wasn't until the SNES and Genesis hit that I really got in to. Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Mario World, Super Mario Kart, Streets of Rage, Star Fox, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (the game that laid the ground work for the 3-D Zeldas and still stand as best in the series), Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, Contra III, Smash TV and so much more. I always look back fondly during the period from 1989-1995, and I'm glad to see Nintendo bringing back some of those classics with the Wii Virtual Console. It's great for people like me who still love these games and want to play them again. It's also nice because it gives the younger crowd a chance to see how games really should be made.

The funny thing about the local DZ was that, while awesome, it did not compare to the Leaps and Bounds that opened up a few months later. As a size comparison, DZ was basically the size of your average Chuck E. Cheese-type place, while Leaps and Bounds was built in a warehouse store, so it was like three or four DZs in one. And they had a "Quiet Room" for adults, which my mother thought was fantastic.

Seriously, I'd pay several hundred dollars for just four or five hours in a big Leaps and Bounds again. But maybe that's because the crap college kids would get into is far worse than young children

WOW let me see here what I rember.........well the realese of n64, KISS Reunion....Cough......Power Rangers loved that show, yes I rember the Pokemon trading cards, and as pogs began to fade out, playing slammers was coming into style man the fights I had when someone took my good slammer.

Woot! Pokemon Red! I rememeber have the Blue one because I liked Blastoise better! Goodness, I can still remember the hours I spent in Diglett's Tunnel training to 60ish before fighting er... Lt. Surge! Blastoise destroyed that gym!

This one resonates with me alot: Crash Bandicoot= first video game I owned, and Lion King= First film I saw in a cinema. Other than that, the other games, films and cartoons you mentioned I loved aswell.

Apart from those topics to which I am biased, its an all-round good article. Well done.